Remove from her the means of all annoyance,
And still keep eyes upun her:-So, good night :
My mind she has mated', and amaz'd my sight :
I think, but dare not speak.
GENT.

Good night, good doctor.

[Exeunt.

s My mind she has mated,] Astonished, confounded.

Johnson.
The expression is taken from chess-playing :

that so young a warrior
“ Should bide the shock of such approved knights,
“ As he this day hath match'd and mated too.

Soliman and Perseda.
woman,
“Worse than Medusa mateth all our minds."

Orlando Furioso, by R. Greene, 1599.
“ Not mad, but mated." Comedy of Errors.
In the following instances, (both taken from the ancient metrical
romance of The Sowdon of Babyloyne, MS.) the allusion to chess
is still more evident :

“ The dikes there so develye depe
“ Thai held them selfe chek mate.” P. 7.
“ Richard raught him with a barr of bras
“ That he caught at the gate;
“ He brake his legges, he cryed alas,

“ And felle alle chek mate." STEEVENS.
Scory, in the commendatory verses prefixed to Drayton's He-
roicall Epistles, makes use of this phrase, and exactly in the same

“ Yet with these broken reliques, mated mind,
“ And what a justly-grieved thought can say.'

Holt White. Our author, as well as his contemporaries, seems to have used the word as explained by Dr. Johnson. Mr. Pope supposes mated to mean here conquered or subdued ; but that clearly is not the sense affixed to it by Shakspeare ; though the etymology, supposing the expression to be taken from chess-playing, might favour such an interpretation. “ Cum sublatis gregariis agitur regis de vita et sanguine, sic cum nulla est elabendi via, nullum subterfugium, qui vicit, MATE, inquit, quasi matado; i. e. occisus, killed, a mater, [Hispan.] occidere." Minsheu's Dict. in v. Mate.

The original word was to amate, which Bullokar, in his Expositor, 8vo. 1616, explains by the words, “to dismay, to make afraid ; " so that to mate, as commonly used by our old writers, has no reference to chess-playing. Malone.

sense:

SCENE II.

The Country near Dunsinane.

Enter, with Drum and Colours, MENTETH, Cath

NESS, Angus, Lenox, and Soldiers.
Ment. The English power is near, led on by

Malcolm,
His uncle Siward, and the good Macduff,
Revenges burn in them: for their dear causes
Would, to the bleeding, and the grim alarm,
Excite the mortified man ?.
Ang.

Near Birnam wood Shall we well meet them; that way are they

coming. Cath. Who knows, if Donalbain be with his

brother? Len. For certain, sir, he is not : I have a file

6 His uncle Siward,] “ Duncan had two sons (says Holinshed) by his wife, who was the daughter of Siward, Earl of Northumberland." See, however, a note on the Personæ Dramatis.

Steevens. 7 Excite the MORTIFIED man.] Mr. Theobald will needs explain this expression. “It means (says he) the man who has abandoned himself to despair, who has no spirit or resolution left.” And, to support this sense of mortified man, he quotes mortified spirit in another place. But, if this was the meaning, Shakspeare had not wrote “ the mortified man,” but “a mortified man." In a word, by the mortified man, is meant a religious; one who has subdued his passions, is dead to the world, has abandoned it, and all the affairs of it : an Ascetic. WARBURTON. So, in Monsieur D'Olive, 1606 :

“ He like a mortified hermit sits." Again, in Greene's Never Too Late, 1616: " I perceived in the words of the hermit the perfect idea of a mortified man." Again, in Love's Labour's Lost, Act I. Sc. I. :

“My loving lord, Dumain is mortified ;
“ The grosser manner of this world's delights
“ He throws upon the gross world's baser slaves,” &c.

Steeveys.

Of all the gentry; there is Siward's son,
And many unrough youths “, that even now
Protest their first of manhood.
MENT.

What does the tyrant ?
Cath. Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies :
Some say, he's mad; others, that lesser hate him,
Do call it valiant fury: but, for certain,
He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause
Within the belt of rule.
Ang.

Now does he feel
His secret murders sticking on his hands;
Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;
Those he commands, move only in command,
Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
MENT.

Who then shall blame
His pester'd senses to recoil, and start,
When all that is within him does condemn
Itself, for being there'?
Слтн.

Well, march we on,
To give obedience where 'tis truly ow'd :
Meet we the medecin ? of the sickly weal;

8 – UNROUGH youths,] An odd expression. It means smooth-faced, unbearded. Steevens. See The Tempest :

till new

v-born chins “ Be rough and razorable." Again, in King John

“ This unhair'd sauciness, and boyish troops,

“ The king doth smile at." MALONE. 9 He cannot BUCKLE his distemper'd cause

Within the belt of rule.] The same metaphor occurs in Troilus and Cressida :

“ And buckle in a waist most fathomless." Steevens. 1 When all that is within him does condemn

Itself, for being there?] That is, when all the faculties of the mind are employed in self-condemnation. Johnson.

2 - the medecin -] i. e. physician. Shakspeare uses this word in the feminine gender, where Lafeu speaks of Helen in

And with him pour we, in our country's purge,
Each drop of us.
Len.

Or so much as it needs,
To dew the sovereign flower, and drown the weeds'.
Make we our march towards Birnam.

[Exeunt, marching.

SCENE III.

Dunsinane. A Room in the Castle.

Enter MACBETH, Doctor, and Attendants. MACB. Bring me no more reports; let them fly

all; Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane, I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm ? Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know All mortal consequences have pronounc'd me thus": Fear not, Macbeth; no man, that's born of woman, Shall e'er have power upon thee. ---Then fly, false

thanes,

All's Well That Ends Well; and Florizel, in The Winter's Tale, calls Camillo “the medecin of our house." STBevens.

3 To dew the sovereign flower, &c.] This uncommon verb occurs in Look About You, 1600 :

Dewing your princely hand with pity's tears." Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. iv. c. viii. :

“ Dew'd with her drops of bounty soveraigne." STBEVENS. 4 Bring me no more reports, &c.] “ Tell me not any more of desertions :-Let all my subjects leave me :--I am safe till," &c.

Johnson. s All mortal consequents, pronounc'd me thus :] The old

“All mortal consequences have pronounc'd me thus." But the line must originally have ran as I have printed it :Currents, consequents, occurrents, ingredients, &c. are always spelt, in the ancient copies of our author's plays, currence, consequence, occurrence, ingredience,” &c. Steevens. on thee.] Old copy-upon.

Steevens.

copy reads

6

And mingle with the English epicures ? :
The mind I sway by, and the heart I bear,
Shall never sagg with doubt“, nor shake with fear.

7

English epicures :) The reproach of epicurism, on which Mr. Theobald has bestowed a note, is nothing more than a natural invective uttered by an inhabitant of a barren country, against those who have more opportunities of luxury. JOHNSON.

Of the ancient poverty of Scotland, the following mention is made by Froissart, vol. ii. cap. ii. : “ They be lyke wylde and savage people-they dought ever to lese that they have, for it is a poore countrey. And when the Englyshe men maketh any roode or voyage into the countrey, if they thynke to lyve, they must cause their provysion and vitayle to followe theym at their backe, for they shall fynde nothyng in that countrey," &c.

Shakspeare, however, took the thought from Holinshed, p. 179 and 180, of his History of Scotland : - The Scotish people before had no knowledge nor understanding of fine fare or riotous surfet; yet after they had once tasted the sweet poisoned bait thereof, &c.—those superfluities which came into the realme of Scotland with the Englishmen,” &c. Again : “ For manie of the people abhorring the riotous manners and superfluous gormandizing brought in among them by the Englyshemen, were willing inough to receive this Donald for their king, trusting (because he had beene brought up in the Isles, with the old customes and manners of their antient nation, without tast of English likerous delicats), they should by his seuere order in gouernement recouer againe the former temperance of their old progenitors." The same historian informs us, that in those ages the Scots eat but once a day, and even then very sparingly.

It appears from Dr. Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, that the natives had neither kail nor brogues, till they were taught the art of planting the one, and making the other, by the soldiers of Cromwell ; and yet King James VI. in his 7th parliament, thought it necessary to form an act "against superfluous banqueting." Steevens.

8 Shall never sagg with doubt,] To sag, or swag, is to sink down by its own weight, or by an overload. See Junius's Etymologicon. It is common in Staffordshire to say, “ a beam in a building sags, or has sagged." Tollet. So, in the 16th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion :

“ This said, the aged Street sag'd sadly on alone.” Drayton is personifying

one of the old Roman ways. Again, in i'he Misfortunes of Arthur, 1587 : “ The more his state and tottering empire sagges."

STEEVENS.